| http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19643670#.Tv3gSoU93vk.email DENVER AND THE WEST Lawsuit over Rwandan genocide appealed in federal court in Denver Rwandan President Paul Kagame speaks with journalists in September in Paris. The widows of former presidents of Rwanda and Burundi accuse Kagame of plotting to assassinate their husbands.(AFP/Getty Images file) A lawsuit that seeks to upend the way the world sees the Rwandan genocide has made its way to 18th and Stout streets. Last month, the widows of the former presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi filed a notice of appeal with the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, challenging the dismissal of their lawsuit against current Rwandan President Paul Kagame. The widows claim that Kagame gave the order to assassinate their husbands, an allegation that Kagame vehemently denies and that has never been conclusively settled. "There is a completely different narrative about what happened in Rwanda than is commonly known," said Peter Erlinder, a Minnesota law professor who is representing the widows. The unusual court filing challenges the story of one of the bloodiest acts of genocide in recent world history — a 100-day massacre in 1994 in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed. That massacre was triggered by an April 6, 1994, missile attack that took down the plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira. The death toll over the next three months was equivalent to the combined populations of Denver, Lakewood, Littleton and Englewood. The accepted view is that many of the atrocities were committed by loyalists to the Hutu government and against minority Tutsis and their moderate Hutu supporters. By the end of the killings, Kagame — a Tutsi and the then-leader of a rebel group — was in charge of Rwanda. The lawsuit's accusation is that Tutsis provoked the genocide in order to seize power. Erlinder goes further, saying Hutus had no plans in advance to commit the killings. "These killings werenotas a result of a 'pre-planned government-led genocide' or 'conspiracy,' " the lawsuit says. That, said University of Denver law professor David Akerson, is flat wrong. Akerson was for three years the manager of the  A Rwanda Patriotic Front rebel walks past wreckage from a plane crash that killed Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994. (Associated Press file) An alternate theory on the assassinations of Habyarimana and Ntaryamira is that they were killed by hard-line Hutus as a pretext for the genocide. "It is very clear that it was a well-planned genocide," Akerson said. Killings, he said, sometimes went on at a rate of more than 10,000 per day. "It is statistically impossible that it erupted in such a coordinated and consistent manner across the country" without it being pre-planned, Akerson said. Genocide denial Erlinder is a controversial figure. He was jailed last year for several weeks in Rwanda on charges of genocide denial. Until earlier this year, he was a defense attorney at the Rwanda tribunal for Hutu genocide suspects. He was barred from the tribunal after he refused to appear at the court in Tanzania, saying he feared for his safety. Erlinder said a trove of suppressed evidence files supports his version of events, and he pointed to several acquittals and sentence-reductions at the tribunal as proof that the prosecution's version of the genocide is flawed. Erlinder said he was approached by the former presidents' widows to take on the lawsuit. He filed  Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his wife, Agathe, attend an official meeting in April 1977 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. Agathe Habyarimana and Sylvana Ntaryamira, widow of former Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira, claim current Rwandan President Paul Kagame ordered their husbands' deaths. (STF/AFP/Getty Images file) Leader's immunity After the lawsuit was filed, Kagame's attorneys argued he should be immune under a head-of-state exemption. The U.S. government concurred that Kagame can't be sued while in office. Based on that concurrence, the federal district judge in Oklahoma dismissed the case. Erlinder is asking the 10th Circuit to re-instate the lawsuit, saying the court shouldn't merely defer to the executive branch. Oral arguments aren't expected until mid-2012 at the earliest. According to the Justice Department, no judge has ever gone against an executive branch head-of-state determination. But Ved Nanda, a professor of international law at the University of Denver, said Erlinder isn't automatically sunk. Nanda said the Alien Tort law might allow lawsuits against heads of state who commit human-rights atrocities. The 10th Circuit "cannot ignore the head-of-state immunity from the executive," Nanda said. "But they are permitted under the Alien Tort Claims statute to bring cases against heads of state." John Ingold: 303-954-1068 orjingold@denverpost.com Read more:Lawsuit over Rwandan genocide appealed in federal court in Denver - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19643670#.Tv3gSoU93vk.email#ixzz1i2CecFyy Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse |
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